Printing blankets are in wide use in offset lithographic printing and as is well known in the art, such blankets are used to transfer ink from a printing plate to a material, such as paper, being printed. The usual printing blanket in most common use has a surface layer made of either natural or synthetic rubber; however, the surface layer of such a blanket often lacks the necessary chemical resistance for use with the more newly developed inks and with solutions used to clean the blanket during ordinary use whereby such a surface layer and blanket is often damaged by ink and/or cleaning solution.
In an effort to arrive at a printing blanket in which the surface layer can withstand a variety of operating conditions and is capable of operating with various inks and cleaning solutions without damage thereto, various materials have been proposed for the surface layer, including polytetrafluoroethylene, and as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,164,087. However, a serious problem in using a fluorocarbon in a printing blanket is that it is difficult to adhere the fluorocarbon to an associated substrate layer.